The 'Savage' and the Art. Ethno-Anthropology and Aesthetics in Goethe's Essay from On German Architecture (1772) and Schillers' Philosophical Writings of the 1790s

Against the background of the discursive nexus between cultural anthropology and aesthetic theory in the late 18th century, the young Goethe refers to the >exotic savage< in order to establish an anti-neoclassical aesthetics of genius. His programmatic essay On German Architecture (Von deutscher Baukunst; 1772) even portrays the savage as an archaic prototype of the artistic genius, because of his presumed natural predisposition toward sentimental aesthetic productivity. Whereas the young Goethe constructs to these ends a continuous evolution from the >primitive< body art of indigenous peoples to the >ingenious< architecture of the Strasbourg Cathedral, Schiller starts his aesthetic reflections in the early 1790s with an anti-rousseauistic belief in the progress of mankind. Here, Schiller forcefully denies that the primitive peoples, who are regarded as backward, have any ability to produce or to experience beauty. However, over the course of his art-theoretical considerations, he develops a significant revaluation of the savage from an aesthetic point of view. In so doing, Schiller, on the ground of his neoclassical aesthetics, gets remarkably close to the position of the young Goethe.